Taking a gulp of coffee milk from a pint-size pack, Teshigawara continues. “There’s lots of explosives in my dad’s company’s warehouse, for construction stuff. If I don’t have to worry about gettin’ caught afterward, I can snatch as much as we need.”
“Then, next,” I say, opening a melon bread wrapper. I’m really hungry, and for some reason, everything I eat when I’m in Mitsuha’s body tastes really good.
“Y-y-y…you’re gonna hijack the signal?!” Saya’s voice cracks.
Munching on curry bread, Teshigawara explains. “Rural wireless disaster alert systems like ours are easy to take over, as long as you know the transmission frequency and the superimposed wake-up frequency. The speakers are made so they’ll activate as long as a specific frequency is layered over the audio.”
Melon bread in one hand, I pick up where he left off. “That means we can send the evacuation order all over town from the school broadcasting room.”
I point at the map of Itomori. There’s a circle with a diameter of a little less than a mile, centered on Miyamizu Shrine, and I trace its edge with my finger.
“This is the area that’s supposed to take damage from the meteorite. As you can see, Itomori High is outside it.” I tap on the location of the high school.
“In other words, we just need to evacuate people here, to the schoolyard.”
“B-but that’s…” Saya begins stammering nervously. “That’s a full-blown crime!”
Even as she says it, she’s putting the strawberry—which she saved for last—in her mouth.
“We’ll never get the people around here to move without committing a crime,” I tell her coolly, sweeping away the chocolate drops I’d scattered over the map. That’s right. As long as it gets the people inside this circle to leave, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a crime or not.
“Y’know, Mitsuha, it’s like you’re a different person.”
I grin and take a big bite of melon bread. When I’m in this body, I unconsciously start talking a bit like a girl, but I’ve completely abandoned trying to act like Mitsuha. As long as these guys are still safe when everything’s over, nothing else matters. As long as we’re all alive, things will work out.
“…So. You’re the one in charge of the broadcast, Saya,” I tell her cheerfully.
“Why?!”
“Well, you’re in the broadcasting club, right?”
“Plus, your big sis is in charge of the Town Hall broadcast. Get her to tell you the wireless frequency,” says Teshigawara.
“Huh? I can’t just…”
Ignoring Saya’s protest, Teshigawara happily points to himself. “I’m the explosives guy!”
“And I’m going to go talk to the mayor,” I say, pointing to myself.
“Huh?!” Saya is speechless, and Teshigawara picks up the explanation.
“We can probably set up the evacuation on our own with the plan we just talked about. But if the town hall and firefighters don’t come out at the end, there’s no way we’ll get everybody in all one hundred eighty-eight families to move, y’know?”
“That’s why we need to persuade the mayor,” I tell her. “I’m his daughter. If I can explain it to him rationally, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Teshigawara folds his arms and nods, patting himself on the back. “It’s a perfect strategy!” That’s exactly how I feel. True, our methods are a bit rough, but I don’t think there’s any other way to do it.
“Haaaaaah…” Saya watches us with her mouth agape, though I can’t tell whether she’s amazed or appalled. “Well, I’m impressed you thought it through that far, but… This is all just in case something happens, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
I hadn’t expected that question this late in the game, and I’m at a loss for words.
“Uh…not exactly…”
If Saya doesn’t get on board, this plan won’t work. I don’t know what to tell her, and I search for something to say.
“That ain’t necessarily so!” Abruptly, Teshigawara jumps in, thrusting out the screen on his phone. “Do you know how Itomori Lake got made?”
Saya and I squint at the screen. It’s a site that looks like the town’s home page, with a header that says The Origins of Itomori Lake. Then the words A meteoric lake from twelve hundred years ago, and Incredibly rare for Japan.
“It’s a meteoric lake! This place already had at least one meteorite strike!”
As Teshigawara says this, a triumphant look on his face, something clicks in my mind. I start speaking before I even know what it is. “That’s right—he’s right… That’s why!”
That’s why there was a picture of the comet in a place like that, I realize. Comet Tiamat has a twelve-hundred-year cycle. Itomori Lake is a twelve-hundred-year-old meteoric lake. The meteorite strikes every twelve hundred years, when the comet passes. A presaged disaster. That means it should be avoidable. That picture was both a message and a warning.
I feel as if I’ve picked up an unexpected ally. I can’t hold still any longer. The preparations for this were laid a thousand years ago!
“Good one, Tesshi!”
Without thinking, I stick out my fist, and Teshigawara bumps it. “Yeah!”
This will work. It’s gonna work!
“Let’s do this!”
We turn to Saya, speaking in unison, spit flying with enthusiasm.
“…What are you talking about?”
The voice is rough and heavy, like the sound of scissors cutting into thick cardboard.
I get increasingly flustered. I talk louder, so as not to get steamrolled. “I told you! You have to evacuate the townspeople, just in case, or—”
“Be quiet a minute.”
His voice isn’t raised at all, but it shuts me up.
Mitsuha’s dad, Mayor Miyamizu, closes his eyes wearily and leans back in the upholstered chair in his office. The thick leather creaks audibly. Then he exhales, slowly, and gazes out the window. The shadows of the leaves sway in the bright afternoon sunlight.
“…The comet is going to split in two and fall on this town? More than five hundred people could die?”
He taps the desk with his fingertips, leaving a long pause. Then finally, he returns his gaze to me. The backs of my knees are sweating. For the first time, I realize that’s where Mitsuha gets sweaty when she’s nervous.
“I know it’s hard to believe, but I do have grounds for—”
“How dare you come to me with nonsense like that!”
Out of nowhere, he explodes. The creases between his eyes grow deeper. “Do delusions run in the Miyamizu bloodline?” he grumbles quietly, as if talking to himself. He fixes me with a piercing look and speaks in a low tone. “Listen, Mitsuha. If you’re being serious with me, then you are ill.”
“…Wha—?”
The words won’t come. I realize the confidence I’d had in the clubroom just thirty minutes ago is gone without a trace. The uneasy feeling that I’m actually misguided is building rapidly. No, that’s not true. I’m not deluded, and I’m not sick. I’m—
“I’ll send a car around for you.” The mayor picks up the phone, suddenly sounding concerned. He starts dialing, initiating a call even as he’s speaking to me. “Have a doctor at the city hospital look at you. After that, I’ll hear what you have to say.”
The words send an unpleasant jolt through me. This guy is seriously treating me, his own daughter, like a head case. The second it registers, my whole body goes as cold as ice, while the core of my brain flares so hot it might as well be on fire.
It’s rage.
“—Don’t you talk down to me, you bastard!”
The words come out as a scream. The mayor’s wide eyes are right in front of me. Without thinking, I’ve grabbed him by his necktie and hauled him up. The phone receiver falls to the floor beside the desk, and I hear the tiny buzz of a dead line.
“…Ah—”
I relax my grip. Slowly, the man’s face recedes. Mayor Miyamizu’s lips ar
e slack and trembling slightly, in either shock or bewilderment. We’re staring each other in the eye. Neither of us is able to look away. A cold sweat opens every pore on my body.
“Mitsuha.”
The mayor sounds as if he’s struggling to squeeze the air out.
“No… Who are you?”
He’s trembling. With a nasty sensation, like a little winged bug the wind carried in, the words linger in my ears for a very long time.
Faintly, I can hear the reverberations of hammering in the distance. It’s sometime between midday and evening. The town is too quiet, and even sounds from very far off reach my ears on the breeze. Tok-tok, tok-tok.
After leaving the mayor’s office, I trudge along the hill road overlooking the lake, picturing a nail being driven into hard lumber in time with the noise. An iron nail, wedged into dark, cramped splinters, destined to rust. They’re probably getting ready for the autumn festival up at the shrine, I think absently, gazing at the wooden lanterns that line the road.
Hearing children’s voices above me—“’Kay, see you later!”—I look up.
Farther up the slope, kids with backpacks are waving to one another.
“Mm-hmm, I’ll see you at the festival.”
“Meet us below the shrine.”
With that, a boy and girl part ways with their friend and come running toward me. They’re in the middle years of elementary school, probably about Yotsuha’s age.
It fell on the shrine.
“Don’t go!” The boy’s just about to run past me, and without thinking, I grab his shoulders. “Get out of town! Tell your friends, too!”
Between my arms, the expression of a kid I don’t even know slides into terror.
“Wh-what’s wrong with you?!”
He shoves my hands away. I come back to my senses.
“Sis!”
When I turn toward the voice, Yotsuha’s running down the hill toward me, wearing her backpack and a worried expression. The two kids make a break for it and dash away. I can’t do stuff like this. I’ll just seem creepy.
“Sis?! What’d you do to those kids?!” Yotsuha pounces on me, grabbing my arms and looking up into my face.
What am I supposed to do now?
I look at Yotsuha. She’s anxiously waiting for me to say something. “If Mitsuha had tried…” I murmur the thoughts as they come. “Could she have talked him into it? Is it just me who can’t do it?” Yotsuha’s bewildered, but I ignore her and keep going. “Yotsuha, before evening comes, take Grandma and get out of town.”
“Huh?”
“If you stay here, you’ll die!”
“What?! Sis, c’mon—what’re you talkin’ about?!”
“This is important,” I tell her, but Yotsuha desperately raises her voice, trying to push my words back at me.
“Sis, snap out of it!”
Her eyes are tearing up. She’s scared. As Yotsuha speaks, she stands on her tiptoes, gazing into my eyes. “You took off for Tokyo all of a sudden yesterday, too. You’ve been weird all the time lately, Sis!”
“Huh?”
I feel a strange sense of wrongness… Tokyo?
“Yotsuha, did you just say Tokyo?”
“Heeey, Mitsuhaaa!”
It’s Saya. When I look up, she’s waving wildly from the back of the bike Teshigawara’s pedaling. It brakes, skidding a bit on the asphalt.
“Did you talk to your dad?! How’d it go?!”
Teshigawara’s leaning forward. I can’t respond. I’m confused. I don’t know what to think anymore. The mayor wouldn’t listen to a word I said. Not only that, the guy asked his own daughter who she was. I made him do that. Is it because I’m in Mitsuha? Is that why it didn’t work? In that case, where is she now? Yotsuha says Mitsuha went to Tokyo yesterday. Why? When was “yesterday”?
“Hey, Mitsuha?” I hear Teshigawara’s puzzled voice.
“What’s wrong with your sis?” Sayaka asks Yotsuha.
Where is Mitsuha? Where am I, right now?
What if…?
I lift my eyes. Beyond the houses, the rolling outlines of mountains build on each other, and beyond them, there’s a misty blue ridgeline. The mountain I climbed. The body of the god at the peak. The place where I drank the sake. A light, cold wind blows up from the lake, stirring Mitsuha’s newly short hair. The strands stroke my cheeks softly, almost like someone’s fingertips.
“Is she…there?” I mutter.
“Huh? What? What’s the matter? Is somethin’ up there?”
Yotsuha and Saya and Teshigawara all follow my gaze. Mitsuha, if you’re there—
“Tesshi, let me borrow your bike!”
Even as I speak, I grab the handlebars, wrenching it away from him. I straddle the seat, then kick off.
“Hey, wha—? Mitsuha!”
The seat’s really high. Standing up to pedal, I start climbing the hill road.
“Mitsuha, what about the operation?!”
As I get farther away, Teshigawara yells after me. He sounds like he might be about to cry.
“Get ready, just like we planned! Please!”
My shout echoes through the hushed town. Severed from her body, Mitsuha’s voice rebounds between the mountains and the lake, filling the air for a moment. As if chasing that voice, I stomp on the pedals with all my might.
Someone’s tapping my cheek.
It’s a very faint pressure, probably just the tip of a middle finger. Whoever it is, is being gentle, trying not to hurt me. The fingertip is very cold. Chilly, as if a moment earlier it had been touching ice. Who in the world would wake me up like that?
I open my eyes.
Huh?
It’s really dark. Maybe it’s still night.
Another tap on my cheek. No… This is water. Drops of water have been hitting my face. When I sit up, I finally notice.
“…I’m Taki!” Without meaning to, I say it out loud.
As I climb the narrow stone steps, the evening sun lances straight into my eyes.
I must have been in the dark for quite a while. Taki’s eyes sting and tear up. When I’ve climbed all the way to the top, my guess is confirmed: I’m on the mountain of the body of the god.
What is Taki doing here?
Without really understanding what’s going on, I emerge from beneath the giant tree and begin walking across the basin. Taki is wearing a heavy camping parka and hiking shoes with thick rubber soles. The ground is soft and wet, and it might have just stopped raining—the low grass is thick with water droplets. When I look up, though, the sky is perfectly clear. Thin, shredded clouds stream in the wind, glowing and golden.
My memories are oddly vague.
Still unable to remember anything, before long I come to the edge of the basin, the foot of the slope. I look up the hill. This whole area is a depression. The top of this slope is the top of the mountain. I start climbing. As I do, I search my memories, trying to remember what I was doing before I came here. Then my fingers touch the edge.
Festival music. A light summer kimono. My own face, hair cut short, reflected in a mirror.
That’s right.
Yesterday was the autumn festival. Tesshi and Saya asked me to go, so I put on my traditional clothes and went out. It was the day the comet was supposed to be brightest, so we were going to watch. Yes, that was it. It all seems very distant somehow, but it was definitely yesterday.
My new haircut really startled Tesshi and Saya. Tesshi’s mouth gaped so wide, you could practically hear the sound effect for shock. They were so shaken I felt a little sorry for them. The entire walk to the hill, they whispered behind my back.
“Hey, do you think she got her heart broken?”
“Why do you go there?! Are you some old guy from last century?”
When we’d climbed all the way up the narrow one-lane road and turned at the traffic mirror, there it was: an enormous comet in the night sky, straight above us. Its long, streaming tail shone emerald green, and its head was brighter than the moo
n. If I strained my eyes, I could see particles glittering around it like fine dust. We forgot to talk to each other and just stood there with our mouths open like idiots, staring, fascinated, for a long time.
Then, at some point, I realized the comet had split. There were two big, bright tips, and one seemed to be steadily coming closer. Before long, several delicate shooting stars began shining around it. It was like the heavens were falling. No—that night, the stars actually did fall. It was a sight straight out of a dream, an impossibly beautiful night sky.
I finally reach the top of the slope. The wind buffeting me is cold. Below me, a blanket of clouds unfolds like a shining carpet. Through them, I can see Itomori Lake, which is beginning to be tinted with faint blue shadows.
Huh? I think.
How strange.
For the past little while, I’ve been shaking so hard it’s as if someone’s put me on ice.
Out of nowhere, I’m so scared I can’t handle it.
I’m terrified, anxious, sad, and lonely, and it feels like I might lose my mind. I’m gushing cold sweat as though a tap has broken.
What if…?
Maybe I have gone crazy. Maybe I cracked before I even knew it was happening.
I’m scared. I’m scared. I want to scream right this minute, but sticky breath is the only thing that comes out of my throat. My eyelids open wider and wider, driven by a will that isn’t mine. The surfaces of my eyes are desert dry. They’re gazing at the lake. I know. I’ve seen it.
Itomori is gone.
A bigger round lake has formed, overlapping Itomori Lake.
Somewhere inside my mind, I think, Well, of course it has.
After a thing like that fell on us.
After that leaden, sweltering mass came down on our heads.
That’s right.
That night, I…
It’s as if my joints have broken without a sound. I drop to my knees on the spot.
That night…I…
The air that leaks from my throat becomes a voice, just barely.
“That night…”
Taki’s memories flood into me. The comet disaster that destroyed an entire town. The fact that Taki really lived in Tokyo three years in the future. The fact that, by then, I wasn’t anywhere anymore. The night the star fell. Back then, I…
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